A PhD candidate in the law school of University of Malaya in Malaysia retracted a paper from a journal on Islamic law in governments, because he failed to add his deceased advisor as an author.
The paper, which calls government secularism in Bangladesh “shadow rather than substance,” was published in Jurnal Syariah, which translates to Shariah Journal. It is quite critical of the idea that the country’s Constitution can name Islam as the state religion while also claiming that it cannot grant political status to any religion.
Here’s the notice:
The following article is being retracted from publication in Shariah Journal: “Shadow or Substance? Reflection of Secularism in the Constitution of Bangladesh” by Mohammad Abu Taher (Ph.D Candidate, Faculty of Law, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, [email protected]) in Shariah Journal Volume 22, Issue 1, 2014, pp. 87- 106, as a result of the author request to retract the article from Shariah Journal.
We reached out to Taher, who told us that he is new to academia. According to Taher, though they wrote the paper together, after his advisor passed away he published the paper under only his name. His advisor’s family objected, and he asked the journal to retract.
Hat tip: Rolf Degen
If the article was accepted after peer review, surely a correction adding the deceased supervisor as author rather than a retraction would have been warranted.